Current Club

To be written.

In the Summer semester of 2010 the club began its first club projects: A Steampunk Card Game and a Multiplayer Asteriods game called MASS. The first was a design focused project based in Surrey and the second was a technical project based in Burnaby. Development on the card game was very successful and lasted the duration of the semester, however the asteroids game was abandoned after the first couple discussions due to lack of interest.

Before the merger

January 2009, the Game Developers Club and Game Design Discussion group merged into one club.

Game Design Discussion Group (Pre-Merger Fall 07 - Fall 08)

Seeking to find a way to promote game design interest at SFU Surrey and provide a place for students to freely discuss their ideas and concepts, Cody Church founded the Game Design Discussion Group to represent the game development community at SFU Surrey, which had been sorely lacking.

The club's purpose was the critical discussion and reflection of game design concepts and mechanics, brainstorming new ideas communally in a no-pressure environment. Members were given a place to express their own game ideas without feeling obligated to follow through and actually make the game. Ideation, pure and simple. Members were encouraged to express their ideas and contribute comments to design sessions, becoming more familiar and comfortable in group situations: teamwork is demanded in almost all of SFU Surrey's SIAT courses.

Design discussions are lead by Cody Church with support from his executives. Kyle Sakai traditionally acted as chronicler for events and the ideas creating within, and Drew Batcheller sought to expand the club's activities professional and gain some work as an external focus group for local game companies. Unfortunately, no progress was made, but we'll keep trying.

In Fall of 2008, the GDDG spoke with the sister club, the GDC, into merging into a single club across both SFU Burnaby and Surrey, which was made a reality in Spring of 2009. Eric Raue provides more details on this below in his summary of the GDC.

Game Developers Club (Pre-Merger Spring 08 - Fall 08)

In December 2007 Ryan Bujnowicz and Eric Raue decided to create the Game Developers Club to hold weekly discussions about game development. Even before forming the club they regularly discussed game development with their friends. To them it was a natural extension of what they already enjoyed doing. The first semester the club was a success with around 15 members and almost no advertising. Eric gave a presentation about how programmers can make quality assurance testers' lives easier. A 24 hour Game Programming Competition was held on March 7th and 8th, 2008, which had 7 participants.

During the summer semester the club continued with weekly discussions although it did not grow much due to many students taking the summer off. Another competition was held called the Game Elements Competition which allowed each participant up to spend 70 hours during the course of one month to create a game. However, due to the length and timing only one entry was completed.

In Fall 2008 Ryan and Eric were already in discussions with the Game Design Discussion Group to merge clubs. Most of the members in the club did not excel at art but were great programmers. Many of the members from the other club were artists and designers so it was a perfect match. Merging clubs meant a bigger unified presence on campus. Ryan was on co-op at Blue Castle Games so Jeff Sipko took over Ryan's executive position. Jeff and Eric each gave talks on topics they were most interested in. Between 20 and 30 people attended those talks and their response was positive.